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Sunday, January 25, 2009

Semicolons Semi Suck

I know that it's not a very exciting subject but I have a fear of semicolons and I think a lot of others do too. They are confusing and they seem foreign. Give me a good old comma over a semicolon any day.

But if any of us ever wants to look all official, it may be good to throw a semicolon in every once in a while. For those of you who shudder at the thought of reading a short article on a semicolon, I will provide this cliff note-like version that I came across in the hopes that you too will familiarize yourself with the semicolon:

It took me teaching English to learn how to properly use semi-colon's. I used to make my students chant, "I do not fear semi-colon's" before we began the lesson. They always had this look on their faces like they were going to explode when I brought up the subject.

"Alrighty then. Now I need an article explaining why I should use a semicolon instead of a period"

If you use a period, you're kinda 'supposed to refer to your previous sentence in order to maintain flow; especially if the two clauses are related. For example; you wouldn't use a semicolon to join a clause about skating and a clause about your mom being a whore. However; you could link one about your mom being a whore, and that she let me teabag her. If you don't use semicolons in situations where they should be used, your writing will either:A)Read choppy with really little sentences, causing it to flow poorly.B)Be full of transitions; making your paper substantially longer than it has to be. Or, C)long sentences full of splices that are harder to read and often can be interpreted ambiguously.As you can probably tell, i really enjoy semicolons; if anything, i use them too much.

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